Ecdysis

In anticipation of rindcasting...

Shout out to Dechen, fellow therapist and liminal weirdo—new friend and steady companion as I live the tensions chronicled here.

Meet the Flame

I initially learned the word from my dear friend Jane Miller:

ec·dy·sis

the process of shedding the old skin (in reptiles) or casting off the outer cuticle (in insects and other arthropods).

from the Greek ek- (“out, off”) and duein “put”

(…the “putting off” of a dying, outworn surface).

Ecdysis was the title of Jane’s website at the time I met her.¹ By then she’d already cast off some significant layers of her own. Having once been a UX software engineer, she left the industry behind (along with the monetary comfort it provided) in pursuit of still-clarifying callings that she couldn’t—or, perhaps more accurately, would not—refuse.

“Bodyworker” was the nearest beacon—though even that, as she recently expressed to me, may need to be shed entirely to free up her energy for the more resonant callings that lure her onward: Energy work. Death care. Acting.

Jane is one of many liminal beings I know, though I find her flavor of liminality quite distinct. I readily imagine that she gravitates toward the image of a snake shedding its skin because it harbors deep mythopoetic resonances for her on a soul level. Jane has a profound and deep-reaching affinity for death—and not just the literal kind. Her capacities as a steward and companion of death, while including accompaniment of actual bodily death, also reach well beyond that toward subtler forms of death that are deeply elusive, evading simple and precise articulation.

Poetry usually does better in these cases. Here I think of Goethe’s famous poem Selige Sehnsucht. There are multiple translations, always hard to pick from. This rendition comes from the collection I have at hand:

Tell it only to the wise,
For the crowd at once will jeer:
That which is alive I praise,
That which longs for death by fire.

Cooled by passionate love at night,
Procreated, procreating,
You have known the alien feeling
In the calm of candlelight;

Gloom-embraced will lie no more,
By the flickering shades obscured,
But are seized by new desire,
To a higher union lured.

Then no distance holds you fast;
Winged, enchanted, on you fly,
Light your longing, and at last,
Moth, you meet the flame and die.

Never prompted to that quest:
Die and dare rebirth!
You remain a dreary guest
On our gloomy earth.²

The title for this translation is rendered Blessed Longing, though I’ve also seen it translated, admittedly with less literal accuracy, as Ecstatic Longing. Ecstasy is a sibling of ecdysis—they share the common root ek- (“out”). Both, in their own ways, imply a moving out of and beyond oneself.

Goethe’s death-praising message is clear: the soul needs its deaths and deeply longs for them, even as it fears and resists them. The impassioned flame of aliveness feeds upon death in service to rebirth. To deny and turn away from death, then—the many subtle deaths preceding the cessation of our physical body’s functioning—is to sacrifice the fuller life.

Jane—whether intentionally or unintentionally, apparently—seems to be a catalyst and instigator, an ecdysial doula aiding the soul through its necessary concatenation of deaths.

During our first face-to-face conversation, I felt my body irradiated by what I can only describe as subtle energy, accompanied by a strange sense of timelessness. Everything was cast in uncanny light, as if growing from roots that retreat into utter mystery.

Reflecting now on the time I spent with Jane in person following that first meeting, I suspect I implicitly recognized something in her way of being: a relentless impulse to leap out beyond safe, comfortable, and familiar zones toward those risky edges where aliveness flares up most intensely right at the edge of impending death. Jane, as I’ve come to know her, continuously dares rebirth, iterating and learning as she goes, leaving a trail of offcast rinds behind her.

These zones where aliveness peaks at the edge of death are, I suspect, the very places where our latent individuality most intensely vibrates.³ Our most realized potentials communicate with us through Erotic signals, continuously coaxing us to die into rebirths that gradually remold us in their image.

Death to Convention

At the time I met Jane, I also happened to be reading John Heron’s Feeling and Personhood, a compelling account of the development of personhood that, like with Jung or Corbin or Assagioli or Plotkin, envisions individuation as a process guided and impelled by numinous and transpersonal forces.

I was particularly struck by Heron’s description of the unavoidability of enculturation into conventional norms, paired with the inevitable requirement that we eventually shed and “see through” these conventional patterns if we are to realize our latent individuality. A crucial pivot occurs amid the transition from what he calls the “conventional person” to the “creative person.”

“The purely conventional person is other-directed, whereas the creative person is in some measure self-directed. This does not mean abandoning conventional behaviour, but making appropriate parts of it one’s own in an aware and flexible way, while discarding those parts of it that are restrictive and stereotypic.”⁴

Conventional norms, as Heron sees it, harden into something like a “psychic skin,” reinforcing our tendency to reflexively assume the positions that modern societal norms, any number of dominant subcultures, and our familial-ancestral patterns train us into. “Modern” conventionality typically entices us toward well-trodden roads and established niches through the implicit promise of acceptance, stability, and economic security.

Someone who sheds this “skin” may still operate within any number of conventional arenas—but the process of individuation trends toward a loosening identification with these conventional roles, paired with an increasing sense of freedom to choose, or create,⁵ the arenas we inhabit based on their level of resonance with conditions that kindle and support authentic Eros.

Living according to Erotic decisions—choosing aliveness—is rarely easy. It regularly entails courage and sacrifice, a leaping into uncertainty and “daring rebirth” through a willingness to die to any ways of living that keep us safely distant from the bleeding edge of genuine creative flow.

Jane, exuding an uncanny comfort following her aliveness into zones of considerable uncertainty, agitated something that I sense was already nascent in me: a growing sense of discomfort with residual shapes of my conventional skin, and of a nascently swelling shape within, longing for ample space to stretch and breathe…

…and not simply to breathe alone, it seems, but to con-spire⁶ with others.

Erotic Murmurations

For all this talk about individuation, I don’t see any of these ideas about personhood as being fundamentally about “me” or “you.”

Individuation could be described as a process whereby the cosmos concentrates itself into increasingly complex, differentiated centers of self-experience.⁷ In the course of evolution, centers with increasingly rich depths of personhood begin emerging. Richer personhood comes with increased capacity for conscious participation in the ingression of unique archetypal forms into the realm of time and space. The individuating person harbors an array of latent gifts and potentials that can’t be found anywhere else in the same precise configuration.

This leads back to the point I am continuously compelled to reiterate: a crucial zone of cosmic relevance for contemporary human beings is found in the generative potentials between and amongst individuating persons.

In this situation, “your” Eros, in its deepest and purest form, is not about “you” at all. Eros is a cosmic communication, a crucial hint of relevant potentiality registered as subtle signals coursing through the living body. Authentic Eros is what it feels like when the cosmos lures itself toward the latent possibilities it seeks to bring forth in, as, and through you, because these potentials have a distinct role to play in emerging constellations of creative relationships that carry deep relevance for the evolving whole.

I don’t believe refined Eros leads to narcissistic ends. I do, however, believe that Eros can be—and very often is—hindered and distorted. Many modern conventions train and constrain Eros in countless ways, consciously or unconsciously stultifying and deadening authentic creative life force. Beyond this, that the deeper Erotic currents I’m referencing here can be obscured or overpowered by other kinds of attractors.

By contrast, relational contexts that intentionally seek deep alignment with flows of mutual aliveness open the possibility for deepening participation in necessary cultural metamorphosis. Ideally, this would lead to a positive feedback loop, continually creating and further reinforcing conditions supporting collective attunement to, and entrainment with, evolutionarily relevant creative processes.

Ria Baeck, along these lines, directly associates what she calls “taking the leap”—her language for the decisive shift beyond the ways of being encoded in the conventional enticements of late post/modernity—with what Jean Gebser described as consciousnesss mutation. In our case, the presently deficient mental-rational structure of consciousness is dying and transforming into the now-emerging integral structure.

This “leap” is a major existential choice: a confrontation with the insecurity and fear of death that meets us when we dare to reorient our relationship with money, trusting in life’s capacity to support our basic needs when we prioritize our devotion to the creative allurements and demands of authentic Eros over choosing “safe” conventional paths for the sake of easy financial security.⁸

As Ria puts it:

“For many, taking the step into actually living an emergent life means quitting the ‘one job’ that brings a predictable sum of money into the bank account every month. This brings us face to face, straight away, with the hurdle of financial security – and with it, security in general. For many people, this is the ultimate reason why (they think) they cannot follow what life is telling them to do…

…Life has more in store for us than just ‘a job’. Everyone has a call from deep within – be it in a job or in self-employment or something altogether different. The soul’s call is alluring when we start to pay attention. In principle we all have the power to choose whether to answer Yes or No. To be at peace with saying Yes to what our soul holds in store for us, we need to expand our story beyond the mainstream narrative around security, finances and how the current economic system works.

Visions for an emerging Erogenic cultural milieu⁹ are springing forth. Such a culture would likely form as a living and entangled relational field of “sourcekeepers,” or individuals stewarding soul-led projects lured forth by authentic Eros. Tom Nixon’s notion of working with source offers a vision for how groups can self-organize in service of latent potentials, discerning differential levels power and responsibility surrounding particular initiatives while also situating Erotic sovereignty, for all individuals, as the orienting principle guiding what we call “work.”

Crucially, a culture conducive to evolutionarily adaptive and Erotically lured mururmations would also support Erotic clarification in all individuals. There are a number of cultural trends that, while distinct, are largely convergent in their aim to work out the nuances of the cultivation, as well as clarification, of Eros—both philosophically¹⁰ and phenomenologically through deep contemplative practice.¹¹

Describing these emerging cultural potentials “postconventional” is not to suggest that they are wholly beyond conventions. “Postconventional” implies the search for new norms capable of inviting possibilities that are restricted within the social imaginary of modernity. The newly budding forms I am witnessing seem to hint toward conditions conducive to the emergence of numerous creative social fields that are fluid and dynamic, variously overlapping yet distinct, continuously co-shaped and re-shaped by the entangled individuation and ensouled becoming of the sovereign agents that form them.

Staying attuned to cultural metamorphosis necessarily entails feeling the tug of competing conventions, old and new.

Crucified Between Worlds

Zak Stein’s catchphrase “a time between worlds” has grown into something of a trope in the circles I’m drawn to these days, perhaps at the danger of becoming outworn. Still, there’s a deep reason that this phrase has caught on, and its poignancy is likely to endure for quite some time.

There is no shortcut through the tension of living in-between the senescent modern world and the latent futures urging to spring forth amid its decomposition. I regularly remark that I feel like I’m crucified between worlds.

The upshot, given that we live in radically metamorphic times, is that the tacit promise of stability through adherence to conventional norms is being rapidly drained of its persuasiveness. Amid accelerating cultural chaos, our world won’t sit still long enough for a growing number of conventions to endure as “conventional.” As enticements toward modern conventions lose their luster, impulses to seek more relevant pathways have a chance to find traction within upheaval.¹²

If we don’t take the leap from familiar ground, voluntarily hospicing modernity, we’ll inevitably be thrown off our feet—and all the more likely dragged along into literal death. May as well fly straight for that flame and die.

Taking the Leap, Stepwise

Here’s where I offer a something of a counterpoint to the stark poetics of “taking the leap” or “flying straight for the flame.” I still wrestle with simplistic the ideal of abandoning modern conventions in one fell swoop.

Over tea last week, my friend Carol Xu described her experience of gradually embracing her postconventional allurements. Glancing back over her trajectory spanning the last several years, she recognized her still-unfolding process of “taking the leap” as a series of baby steps, rather than a discrete, dramatic, or singular event.

The tension of dwelling between worlds is, in part, generated by relatively hard constraints. Even those ablaze with Eros for the arising new remain entangled with the modern world and its material conditions. Degrees of economic freedom vary widely.

The core of my survival dance has involved practicing psychotherapy. I consider myself extremely privileged to have the opportunity to make a livelihood doing this. I come to love those I work with, doing what I can to help bring forth what is within them. This sometimes means luring hidden pains into the light of compassionate witnessing. Sometimes, coaxing forth authentic Eros. Both are inevitably intertwined, and simple loving presence and curiosity is the most important ingredient.

I do struggle, though—deeply at times—with ambivalence about psychotherapy as a conventional profession, embedded in our present cultural landscape. Viewed from one perspective, therapy looks like another cultural artifact of modernity, both expressing and reinforcing the atomizing trends of late stage capitalism.¹³ From another angle, it appears as a sacred alchemical vessel, hermetically sealed to safely hold the descent, healing, and growth of the soul, a necessary cultural manifestation of the innate drive toward individuation.¹⁴ Given that the irreducibly individual dimension of ensoulment is here to stay, I suspect that explicitly private relational containers like those provided in psychotherapeutic relationships will likely have enduring relevance, even in the worlds that lie on the other side modernity.

Given the times we find ourselves in, though, the hidden whisperer (my name for the creative tug, the pull of Eros) increasingly entices me toward weird margins of collective practice that I believe will hold increasing relevance, meeting a collective need that supersedes what private containers like therapy or coaching can provide. As the deadening skin of modern conventions continue breaking open, I expect that the postconventional beacons of transindividual relational processes will shine ever-brighter through the cracks.

Alongside my conventional endeavors, the pull to the soul-led life continues calling me into weird constellations of erotically-lured collaborations. Creativity through inter-being is calling.¹⁵

I am insatiably interested in the endeavor of finding deeply aligned Erotic coherence amid groups of individuals who, ideally, are both highly differentiated and subtly sensitive. Approaching this possibility in practice is a major feat and was the focus of a recent collaboration called The Agile Collective—where I feel I barely grazed, but genuinely glimpsed, the possibility of that sort of coherence. I suspect that event will serve as a seed for more experiments to come.

As another example, at the end of June I’ll be co-hosting an event called Presencing Death with Jane.

Wings Spanning

Conventionality isn’t just “out there,” encoded and embodied in norms, institutions, economic systems, and red-taped webs of jurisprudence with wildly varying (and rapidly decreasing) degrees of relevance to people’s actual lived conditions. Conventionality also lives powerfully within.

While I have slowly been integrating my “conventional self” with my “postconventional self”, I continue to discover forces within that fight against blurring the “boundaries” between them.

When I honestly examine this resistance, I find that a very big part of it stems from fear of scarcity. If I am too much of a weirdo, if I stray too far from the image of a safely neutral therapist, I’ll repel potential clients and fail to achieve a viable livelihood. As I stand right on the precipice of earning my license as a psychologist in California, this longstanding tension heightens and roars. Crucified between worlds, the pressures exerted by my conventional self are alive and well.

Yet, when I imagine practicing what I preach and daring to trust that sufficient money will follow awakened Eros, the possibility of alluring aligned relationships in all contexts, including psychotherapeutic encounters, also glimmers.

Beyond this, taking the leap means trusting that our most clarified aliveness aligns with, and expresses, the living intelligence of the cosmos itself.

In this spirit, I publish this article in anticipation of ecdysis. I’ll soon shed another layer here, through a gesture that feels partly like performance art, partly like being lived¹⁶ by the same creative pull that lured this writing out without conscious planning—all an act of devotion to the inner shapes still swelling against the patterns of my cracking conventional skin.

I’ll end with a poem that came through immediately in the wake of my catalytic encounter with Jane, approaching two years ago. It contains everything I’ve aimed to express here.

Straightjacketed
By expectancies
Tossed behind

Imagined gazes

Hardening
To fury now
A truer sun

Kindling inside

I feel it now
This skin
Will break

Wings spanning

---

Shedding imminent.

1. Understandably, she later shed that title. Not the catchiest of words.

2. Sagt es niemand, nur den Weisen,
Weil die Menge gleich verhohnet,
Das Lebendge will ich preisen
Das nach Flammentod sich sehnet.

In der Liebesnachte Kiihlung,
Die dich zeugte, wo du zeugtest,
Uberfallt dich fremde Fiihlung
Wenn die stille Kerze leuchtet.

Nicht mehr bleibest du umfangen
In der Finstemis Beschattung,
Und dich reiBet neu Verlangen
Auf zu hoherer Begattung.

Keine Feme macht dich schwierig,
Kommst geflogen und gebannt,
Und zuletzt, des Lichts begierig,
Bist du Schmetterling verbrannt.

Und so lang du das nicht hast,
Dieses: Stirb und werde!
Bist du nur ein triiber
Gast Auf der dunklen Erde.

From “Goethe: Selected Poems,” (translations by Michael Hamburger, David Luke, Christopher Middleton, John Frederick Nims, Vernon Watkins) pgs. 207-208.

3. I’ve referenced it before, I’ll reference it again:

“Be—and know as well the terms of nonbeing, the infinite ground of your inmost vibration, so that, this once, you may wholly fulfill them.”
—Rainer Maria Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus (Bk. 2, Sonnet 13, Edward Snow trans.)

4. John Heron, Feeling and Personhood, p. 58.

Heron’s model moves through eight phases of personhood: the primal person, the spontaneous person, the compulsive person, the conventional person, the creative person, the self-creating person, the self-transfiguring person, the charismatic person.

As with many models, the organic expression of these ways of being in any person’s life doesn’t unfold through a simple linear progression.

5. Bill Plotkin defines true adulthood as the discovery and creation of one’s own, singular ecological niche—which eventually entails creating a “delivery system” for offering one’s soul-led work to the world.

6. con- (“with”), spirare (“breathe”) — “to breathe together..”

7. There are no individuating centers that are not themselves composed of individuating centers (interacting bodies made of interacting cells made of interacting molecules, etc). There are no individuals independent of the reciprocal influences of ecological relationships (living agents continually co-shape the surrounding environment while being continually co-shaped by it). A.N. Whitehead and Gilbert Simondon offer deeply sophisticated accounts of the cosmos as a nexus of living centers that continuously differentiating, combining, and communing in various ways. Relatedly, as Michael Levin puts it, “all intelligence is collective intelligence.”

8. Burbea’s soulmaking dharma poses the question: “what does the image demand of me?” Image, an encountered through imaginal practice, might be conceived as a self-presentation of cosmic Eros in its relevant patterns for the imaginal practitioner, a harbinger of their latent personhood.

9. In this vein, I appreciate one of the descriptions my friend Tucker applies to the emerging metamodern cultural attractor: “Erotic AF.”

10. Iain McGilchrist and David J. Temple, both drawing significantly from A.N. Whitehead’s process metaphysics, comprise two major philosophical sources.

Temple, explicitly connecting Eros and Value, notes:
“We are by no means the only thinkers to suggest this., See, for example, Iain McGilchrist’s The Matter with Things, where he picks up a similar thread to the one outlined here, based ultimately in the Kabbalistic tradition’s transmutation through Western thought and German idealism into Whitehead. This alignment with McGilchrist was discovered after the first draft of this manuscript had already been completed.”

David J. Temple, First Principles and First Values, p. 269.

11. Burbea’s soulmaking dharma, itself philosophically robust, posits both Eros and Values as essential features of soulful perception, and includes exercises on the clarification of desire. Rosa Lewis also highlights Eros as an essential dimension of awakening.

12. https://thesideview.co/journal/complex-potential-states/

13. Phil Cushman, himself a therapist, reckons with this side of the profession in his book Constructing The Self, Constructing America.

14. Jung makes a compelling case for this perspective in his essay Problems of Modern Psychotherapy, noting that spaces offering psychological privacy emerged in direct correspondence with a dawning awareness of psychic individuality.

15. “In creativity, origin is present.”

Jean Gebser, The Ever-Present Origin, p. 313.

16. "We are lived by powers we pretend to understand.”
–W.H. Auden